Biography

ORGANIZATIONAL HISTORY

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) was founded in New York City in 1973 as
the National Gay Task Force (NGTF) and quickly became a central force in lesbian and gay
movement politics. At a time with vibrant grassroots gay liberation and lesbian feminist
activism, the Task Force sought to introduce a vehicle for organizing at the national
level. Founding members included Howard Brown, Martin Duberman, Barbara Gittings, Ron
Gold, Franklin Kameny, Nathalie Rockhill, and Bruce Voeller. In 1977, the Task Force
arranged with President Jimmy Carter's assistant Midge Costanza for an historic first
White House meeting with representatives of several gay organizations. From its
beginnings, the Task Force defined as its primary goal the creation of a society in
which lesbians and gay men could live openly and free from violence, bigotry, and
discrimination. Over the last quarter century, NGLTF has lobbied, organized, educated,
and demonstrated for full gay and lesbian civil rights and equality, taking on anti-gay
and anti-lesbian forces among medical specialists, employers, the military, and the
media. The areas in which the NGLTF concentrated its wide-ranging efforts included the
following:

Psychiatry

In the early 1970s, the NGLTF staffed educational booths at American Psychiatric
Association conventions and took an active role in lobbying the APA to remove
homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. In 1978, it urged the U.S. Public
Health Service to stop certifying gay immigrants as "psychopathic personalities." Ron
Gold played a key role.

Employment and Military Service

In an effort led by board member Frank Kameny to end employment discrimination against
lesbians and gay men, the NGTF successfully pushed in 1975 for the U.S. Civil Service
Commission to rule that gay people can serve as federal employees. In the late
seventies, NGTF staff conducted a survey of corporate hiring policies (called Project
Open Employment) to determine whether U.S. employers explicitly barred discrimination on
the basis of sexual orientation. This survey was followed a few years later by another
of municipal police departments. These efforts were complemented by a 1985 victory in
the U.S. Supreme Court decision of NGTF v. Oklahoma, which overturned a law prohibiting
gay teachers from discussing gay rights. In 1988, the NGLTF started the Military Freedom
Project to end discrimination against lesbian and gay male members of the U.S. Armed
Forces, and it protested the 1993 "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.

Civil Rights

In the 1970s, the NGTF also began to monitor local, state, and federal battles over gay
and lesbian civil rights, developing large clippings files that focused on key issues
and individuals. These files include clippings on such adversaries as Anita Bryant, who
led the campaign against a pro-gay and lesbian rights bill in Dade County, Florida, as
well as then-California governor Ronald Reagan, who had proposed an anti-gay amendment
to California's state constitution. These records further recount, among other matters,
the Task Force's introduction in 1975 of the first federal lesbian and gay civil rights
bill, its 1981 campaign to defeat the anti-gay Family Protection Act, its efforts
starting in 1986 with the formation of the Privacy Project to repeal anti-gay sodomy
laws, and its support in 1992 of local opposition to anti-gay referenda in Oregon and
Colorado.

Feminism

NGTF women played a critical role in winning support from the mainstream women's
movement for lesbian and gay rights. They campaigned successfully for a lesbian rights
resolution at the 1975 national convention of the National Organization for Women. In
1977, co-Executive Director Jean O'Leary and women board members obtained endorsement of
lesbian and gay rights from the U.S.-sponsored conference for International Women's Year
in Houston, Texas. O'Leary was the only openly lesbian delegate on Carter's
International Women's Year Commission. At the conference, 130 openly lesbian delegates
attended. In 1993, NGLTF enlarged its work on lesbian concerns by coordinating the first
congressional briefing on lesbian health issues.

Gays and Lesbians on Television and in the Arts

Recognizing the benign neglect, if not outright threat to gays and lesbians from how
they were represented in the arts, the NGTF closely monitored the images of gay men and
lesbians within the world of television, stage, and screen. This resulted in the
creation of the Gay Media Task Force, which took on as one of its primary missions the
lobbying of major television networks to improve their coverage of lesbian and gay
issues. In the world of the arts, the Task Force actively opposed the anti-gay
restrictions on grants from National Endowment for the Arts proposed in 1990.

Anti-Gay and Lesbian Violence

The Task Force has concentrated on preventing and bringing attention to anti-gay
violence over the years. In 1982, it began its Anti-Violence Project, directed by Kevin
Thomas Berrill from the project's beginnings until 1994. In its most focused
data-gathering effort to date, the NGLTF set up a telephone crisis line designed to
provide assistance to people who had been harassed or assaulted, as well as lay the
groundwork for a comprehensive study of violence against lesbians and gay men. NGLTF's
Anti-Violence Project produced reports that were regularly cited as authoritative on the
subject of homophobic violence. In 1987, the Task Force helped secure passage by the
U.S. House of Representatives of the Hate Crimes Statistics Act, the first federal law
to address sexual orientation, which was signed into law in 1990.

AIDS

The onset of the AIDS epidemic led to an unforeseen array of political struggles in the
early and mid-1980s. NGTF responded early in the developing crisis, pushing for a
statement on national blood policy in 1983 and obtaining the first federal funding for
community-based AIDS education in 1984. NGTF was instrumental in negotiating FDA
approval of the first HTLV-III antibody test. It also ensured that the test was to be
licensed only to professional physicians and that it was always to be accompanied by an
explanation of the limits of its accuracy and usefulness. This push for quality medical
care also brought the benefit of doctor-patient privilege, which proved an enormous boon
in light of the sudden explosion in AIDS-related discrimination. NGLTF's files on
AIDS-related discrimination -- home evictions, school expulsions, and job terminations
-- grew with alarming speed in the early years of the epidemic. This wave of
discrimination was met by an uncoordinated and seemingly reluctant response to the
epidemic at the federal level. In 1985, NGLTF executive director Virginia Apuzzo would
testify before a U.S. Congressional hearing on the abysmal failure of the federal
response to AIDS. In 1991, NGLTF staff briefed the Congressional Black Caucus on the
issue of AIDS and people of color.

Political Activism

Although the politics of the epidemic absorbed uncounted days and hours of energy at
NGTF, the organization continued to grow and change. In 1985, NGTF officially became the
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, a move that marked both the specificity of lesbian
life and politics and the coalition between lesbians and gay men. Although the name
change cost NGLTF some gay male members, it sought to rectify matters by publicly
stating the hope that gay men and lesbians could work in tandem as independent but
related activists. One year later, NGLTF officially moved its offices from New York to
Washington, DC, setting itself up more squarely in the midst of a specifically national
lesbian and gay politics.

The development of a genuinely national purview at NGLTF involved more than mere
relocation. By the mid-1980s it had become normal for NGLTF staff members-especially its
executive directors-to spend entire weeks traveling to local lesbian and gay events,
lending moral support and the promise of political backing to struggles across the
United States. The Task Force helped organize the 1987 and 1993 Marches on Washington to
demand lesbian and gay men's rights and worked to increase the visibility and
participation of lesbians and gay men in the presidential elections at both the
Democratic and Republican National Conventions. In 1988, NGLTF held the first Creating
Change conference to bring together gay and lesbian activists from around the country.
In 1989, NGLTF started publishing campus organizing newsletters and initiated a Lesbian
and Gay Families Project to advocate for family diversity and acceptance. In the 1990s,
NGLTF continued to offer new networking and training opportunities to strengthen local
lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered activism in each state.

In 1995, NGLTF evolved further and formed the NGLTF Policy Institute, a separate,
non-profit organization to serve as a national information clearinghouse and resource
center dedicated to educating and organizing around lesbian and gay men's issues. In
1997, NGLTF changed its mission statement to include bisexual and transgendered people
and launched the Federation of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Statewide
Political Organizations.